<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Vulcanism by Merkwerkee</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29224908">Vulcanism</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee'>Merkwerkee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Void Jumpers (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Family Feels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:09:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,494</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29224908</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The ghost of a long-dead Fire Summoner has a conversation with the current Fire Summoner (in training)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Vulcanism</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Horace was a slow man.</p><p>Slow to think, slow to process, slow to anger; his own mother had told him that ever since he was little, he hadn’t had an impulsive bone in his body. It was an unusual trait for a Fire Summoner, for Fire was the magic of high emotion. Quick to flare in anger, quick to die down again afterward, jumping from place to place and emotion to emotion faster than most could follow - that was Fire, but it wasn’t Horace.</p><p>It wasn’t until he’d gotten older and gone on his first tour of the rest of the Fire planet that he figured it out; he was the <em>other </em>side of Fire. The simmering lava, the inexorable tide that resulted in eruptions which permanently rearranged the landscape. Mount Horace, his father had called him jokingly. A volcano, rather than a wildfire. Even his powers had reflected it; slow to use them, they were several orders of magnitude more powerful than his mother’s when he did finally get around to it. Slow, but powerful; that was Horace.</p><p>For all his slowness, he wasn’t a stupid man. He’d picked his parallel carefully, and his wife more carefully still. While they hadn’t been madly in love they’d been good friends for the whole of their marriage - at least, as far he could remember now - and that was perhaps even more important. He’d strived to rule Fire justly and fairly, and if he didn’t always do it right not a person could say he didn’t try.</p><p>He’d had a daughter, too; bright little Mear, as Fiery as they came and the light of his life. He couldn’t remember what she’d looked like, now, or how her voice had sounded. It had been too long, longer than should by any rights have been possible, since he’d seen her, and the years had worn away her face and her voice, along with his wife’s. He couldn’t remember his parents’ names either, and doubted he’d know them if he looked them full in the face any more. </p><p>Somehow, the pain of forgetting was almost as poignant as the pain of remembering. </p><p>Not that he learned that truth right away, of course. For the first couple hundred years Slakta had delighted in reminding him of the family he’d left behind, but she’d eventually gotten bored of it and left him - and Tait, and Danny - mostly alone. </p><p>The saying went that Time was the herb that cured all wounds; in his experience, Time was more apt to simply wear away the sharp edges of the hurt. The loss of his family, the pain of being killed by Slakta, the aches of living - all of it faded away before the relentless march of Time. The only constants were the other two Summoners and their captive Necromancer.</p><p>The first time she’d dragooned them into setting up her memories for a chosen champion to go through said memories and get items of power for her, they’d resisted and tried to tell the champion the truth about Slakta. That champion had died under the claws of an angry dragon; Horace would have liked to say that that person was the last to do so, but the thieves and glory-seekers never quite stopped coming - though sometimes the periods between them were quite long. And each time, Slakta would force them to play a part in her little charade, and to stay silent about her true purpose.</p><p>They gave in, eventually. It was too much work to resist Slakta, and the champions never succeeded anyway. Besides, it was something to do and when they didn’t resist they were allowed to choose the form they presented themselves as. Over the centuries, they’d each developed a preferred guise that reflected more of what they remembered themselves as than what they’d truly looked like - though Horace had yet to figure out why Danny never got any taller.</p><p>It was only in this latest attempt by a group of adventurers that things started to change.</p><p>Now they were <em>here</em>, in the place where it all began, ankle deep in snow, and the current heir to the Fire planet was asking him for help. For all she currently looked like the fiend who’d kept him trapped on the wrong side of the veil for a thousand and more years, there was no mistaking one for the other. Slakta never allowed herself to be vulnerable, never opened herself up to advice. She simply took, and took, and <em>took</em>, without regard for anyone or anything but her own self.</p><p>He took a deep breath.</p><p>“We’ll have to fight her, that’s for sure. She’s just going to be too powerful - we won’t be able to do anything to her until we can beat her down to a place where her defenses have been lowered.” The day they’d trapped Slakta the first time was still hazy in his memory - much of what he remembered was the pain and exhaustion before they’d all been bound up in the trap.</p><p>“But we came to this planet, all five of us, as a kind of, ah,” he trailed off - they’d come to put a stop to what the Blight Summoner was dong because it had started to affect their own planets, but they’d kept their hands off until things had reached that point. A Summoner’s rule over their planet had always been absolute and unchallenged before then; he didn’t know what had happened after, but surely <em>something </em>had changed.</p><p>“We came to this planet to shut down the Summoner, and what she had in mind. We brought <em>nothing </em>other than violence; the battle that ensued was long and bloody and we paid for it.” The image of his long-dead parallel flashed before his eyes but he pushed on anyway. “And those who escaped did not escape unscathed.”</p><p>Lightning crackling in screams of rage and grief at the loss of its balance, bolts hot enough to sear flesh and blacken bone. Bloom, standing fast in the face of annihilation. Water hardening into vengeful spikes of ice at a dying man’s hand. Void, grinning with bloody teeth in a too-wide smile as death bore down upon her.</p><p>No, no-one had really “escaped” that day.</p><p>“And more, Slakta was ready for us, and she <em>is </em>unkillable.” They’d tried damn hard, and none of it had even come close. </p><p>“I believe, at the end of the day, violence is not going to be what ends Slakta. What keeps her here is her disdain for everyone who’s ever looked down on Blight, her disdain for the people of her planet whom she feels did not trust her or worship her adequately.” He felt his lip curl involuntarily at the last remark; worship was never something to be demanded of strangers. It was something given freely to dearest lovers, and somehow Slakta had never realized the difference.</p><p>He noticed the expression on the young Summoner’s face, and held up a hand. “I do not agree with that sentiment, but that <em>is </em>the way that she feels. What keeps her here is hatred. If we’re going to free her spirit, we’ll have to do it with something other than violence.” He heaved a gusty sigh. “But I do fear the prelude will be rather violent. She is the most powerful entity I have ever seen. It will not be an easy fight.”</p><p>He reached out and put a hand on the young Summoner’s shoulder. “If you are a Summoner in training, it’s smart to get advice from those that can give it to you and those you trust but at the end of the day - when you’re no longer in training - these are the kinds of things you’re just gonna hafta follow your heart on, and you’re just gonna hafta figure out on your own.” He grinned down at her, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “And if I am your great great great great <em>GREAT </em>grandfather, then it’ll be my honor and privilege to fight alongside you.”</p><p>He couldn’t remember what his daughter or wife looked like, or how their voices had sounded - couldn’t even remember if they’d shared his name or not - and so he couldn’t say whether this Summoner, so many centuries down the line, resembled them in any physical way before she’d got herself cursed. But the bright Fire in her soul…<em>that </em>reminded him of his precious Mear. As stubborn as they came, and as warm as a hearth fire on a cold night. </p><p>If they <em>were </em>family, then the honor was his to have known her.</p><p>She reached up and squeezed his hand back, where it rested on her shoulder. “I don’t have my normal toolbox to choose from, but…thank you.”</p><p>“You’re welcome.” He released his grip and stepped back, oddly reassured. If she lived through this, he had no doubt she would become a great Fire Summoner one day.</p><p>She just had to live through this first.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>